“HERE WE GO!”
(Part 1)
Day one of this trip to the Hungarian TET was planned quickly: Just a straight line from Vienna to the entrance point of the TET in far most eastern Hungary corner. With Чернотa I followed this line as close as possible on the given gravel tracks. Easy, cheesy, …
As you can see on the map this day’s route wasn’t as straight as mentioned before. Especially along the first km / mi I was avoiding the city area of Bratislava which means plenty of tarmac. So, that little bent to the south, right at the beginning of the ride, was necessary because otherwise it’s not possible to avoid Bratislava due to of fewer bridges over the stream Danube.
Therefore, I planned the route through Hungary, where we went to the next bridge eastwards of Bratislava. There we passed the Danube and the ride continued in a calm bend northeastwards and later eastwards, till we nearly reached the entrance point to the TET in eastern Hungary.
Just when I left the area of Vienna to its eastern end the sun rose. It’s always a spectacle …
when this atomic powered glowing globe is gaining height at the horizon. Due to an unplanned detour …
Чернотa and I passed this big WW1 – Soldier Memorial near the village Bruckneudorf. This war monument was surely one of the biggest ones I’ve seen so far. A little web research showed that it is 24 m or 72 ft high and the third tallest WW1 Memorial in Europe. It was built 1915 from Russian war prisioners.
The ride went on. First we …
crossed over the rails, then we …
followed them eastwards. The light mood which was created by …
the rising sun was beautiful. My black beauty and I …
finally passed at this point at the border between Austria and Hungary. There was no border sign, but you can see that it’s the border on the poles of the energy lines of the railway. The two poles in the foreground, are located in Austria and were made of concrete, whiles the Hungary pole in the background has a diffent shape and is obviously made of steel.
Here we have been waiting for ages at this surely seldom used railway crossing in the middle of Hungarys western nowhere. *doh*
My morning ritual is always the same: After riding the first 100 km /60 mi a day I make a stop for a break. Sometimes I make some coffee, often I just throw in one or two cereal bars for breakfast. Whilst doing this, …
Чернотa was like always impatient and wants to ride on, as you can see on the picture above. o_O
So our ride continued along …
some channels, …
was crossing the motoway, …
went along the edge of cornfields, …
and also some hard packed sand tracks. We followed another …
trail which was leading aside a water channel. The further we rode along it,
the more dense the vegetation got. It was hard to stay on the planned track and there have been plenty of other water channels around. So we rolled very slow through this green labyrinth. Luckily that conditions didn’t last long.
This water crossing, …
was a bit tricky because the surface of the road which was lying now under water was slippery as soap. Whilst taking that photo above, I nearly fell down with the motorcycle. Somehow I got it managed to stay dry. After that little faux pas Чернотa and I followed a few …
dikes along the Danube stream and had …
some very beautiful views to the wetlands there.
Finally we left Hungary for Slovakia at this border crossing. There …
a huge steel beam bridge …
led over the country dividing river Danube. A few miles further …
a short break was taken at an unnamed pond in southern Slovakia.
The ride through Slovakia continued. We passed this simple church, …
and this huge factory chimney which is a left over from former times.
When you see such field tracks with such a concrete-element-surface you can be sure, that during bad weather conditions, it would be good to follow them. That’s because the soil aside such tracks will turn into heavy clay, which will be a problem without proper tires. For example: I had that pleasure on my ride along the Polish TET in 2019.
Here near these fields I had to do a small detour. The detour was caused …
by a farmer. He has plowed away a track which I intended to follow. Because I don’t want to dig crisscross through the fresh plowed fields I took another way. That was no big deal, but surely took 20 minutes to find another rideable way around this huge eastern fields. Around midday …
we followed some easy asphalt roads through Slovakia and passed again over …
to Hungary. Here at this picture is the typical structure of eastern villages visible: A row of houses with small gardens in front of them, a strip green with power lines on it, tarmac or gravel road in the middle, another strip of grass with power poles on it, and another row of houses on the far right-hand side.
Eastwards was the direction to go! When I made this picture I wondered myself how small the traffic density was. Also on well maintained tarmac roads like this one above, only seldom another road user was passed. Probably this area along the southern edge of Slovakia is less populated. Whatever! I put the throttle down and braaped with my black beauty further along this nicely soft bends with a great view. ^_^
To be continued …